News Main Menu

Lecturer to address China's response to AIDS epidemic

November 19, 2009

Lecturer to address China's response to AIDS epidemic

On Dec. 9, Joan Kaufman, director of the AIDS Public Policy Training Project at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, will present "Pressing Issues in China's Health Care System: Addressing AIDs and other Critical Challenges." The lecture will begin at 5:15 p.m. in room 112 of the Lewis Katz Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

Kaufman's talk will focus on the multiple health care challenges facing Chinese society and government. Her presentation will examine how changes in the socio-economic situation in China as a result of reform and modernization are altering the demands on the health care system. She also will discuss the approaches being adopted by the PRC government at the national and local levels to address the problems and provide commentary on how well China is doing in terms of improving its health care delivery system for both urban and rural residents.

Kaufman is the founding director of the AIDS Public Policy Training Project at the Kennedy School of Government and a lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School. She also is a senior scientist at the Schneider Institute for Health Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Kaufman directs the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative's China program and serves as special advisor to the director of the Wellesley Centers for Women. From 1996 to 2001, she was the Ford Foundation's gender and reproductive health program officer for China. She spent 2001-02 as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and 2002-03 as a visiting fellow in the East Asian Legal Studies Program at Harvard Law School. Her recent publications include a forthcoming book chapter about China's SARS epidemic and articles on China's population and family-planning policy, a recent policy forum inScience magazine on the AIDS epidemic in China, and the gender impacts of health-sector reforms in poor countries. She received her doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health.

Kaufman's talk is sponsored by the School of International Affairs' program on U.S.-China Technology, Economic and Business Relations and the College of Liberal Arts' Asian Studies Program.